The “Wendy City” … The Rep’s ultimate musical … and the “Half Monty”?
By Joe Pollack
Wendy Wasserstein gave a voice to American women through a series of elegant, funny, highly personal plays. Many won critical honors; one earned both a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize. After her death last January, theaters lined up to honor her. For “The Wendy City: St. Louis’ Tribute to Wendy Wasserstein,” three local companies will present her plays. The Sisters Rosensweig, running now at the New Jewish Theatre; The Heidi Chronicles, to be staged by the Rep in February; and An American Daughter, which the Orange Girls will produce next summer.
The Sisters Rosensweig, which could just as easily be called The Sisters Wasserstein, gives us three New York Jewish sisters at a reunion in London. Kari Ely (above, in NJT’s Broken Glass) is Sara, the eldest; Lavonne Byers is Gorgeous; and Liz Hopefl is Pfeni.
Ely played several small roles (a wife, a protester, the leader of a women’s group) in the Rep’s production of The Heidi Chronicles back in 1990, two years after the Broadway opening.
“She [Wasserstein] said a lot about women and their places in the world, not just the stage,” Ely says. “I did not have Heidi’s struggle. But now, nearing the middle of my own life, I can understand how much her plays spoke to all of us.”
The Rep’s holiday-season show, despite its unwieldy title, The Musical of Musicals, (The Musical!), might be a keeper. We see the basic story from five viewpoints (think of The Seven Samurai), but the differences come from the music. The tale flows from the musical styles of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Webber, Sondheim, Herman and the team of Kander and Ebb. It will benefit from two things: Director Pamela Hunt, who’s directed several Rep musicals (and who assisted in Musical’s New York birth) and lyricist Joanne Bogart, a member of the original company, who will join Matt Bailey, Edwin Cahill and Kristin Maloney onstage.
I attended Meet Me in St. Louis just after Stages had announced a production of The Full Monty for 2007. A man in a row ahead scurried over and with an almost-panicky expression, asked, “What will it be like?” I said it would be OK, that the nudity was so minimal as to not be present at all and, if he was concerned, to think of it as The Half Monty. He seemed satisfied and returned to his seat, at which point someone sitting behind me said, “Isn’t that so St. Louis!”
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